After-hours doc with a touch of Disney

New urgent care clinic for kids in Lynbrook will cut down trips to ER

By Michael Orbach

Issue of August 14, 2009 / 24 Av 5769

When Dr. Robert van Amerongen decided to open an own urgent care clinic for children he spent five years looking at the best clinics in the United States. Then, he went to Disney World.

Dr. van Amerongen, a Five Towns resident who is chief of the pediatric emergency department at New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, even received a diploma from Mickey Mouse himself.

That partially explains why Priority Pediatrics, the clinic van Amerongen will launch by late August, offers a different slant to the standard medical model.

“When people go to Disney world, what’s the most memorable experience? It’s not a ride... What they almost always say is the magical moment is when a staff member helps them get on a ride, or took care of any hassles, or had a nice interaction [with them],” van Amerongen explained. “ [At Priority] health and safety are number one, but number two, we’re making this an exemplary experience. I don’t want people to compare us to the emergency room, and say how good we are. We want parents to compare it to any experiences they’ve had with their children and say what an outstanding experience it was.”

An unlikely statement from a doctor whose clinic will treat asthma, Strep, ear infections, dehydration, broken bones and other maladies of childhood, but just to be on the safe side, Van Amerongen had a theme park company design the clinic.

Priority Pediatrics, the first urgent care clinic in the Five Towns area solely for children, intends to fill the gaps between regular office hours at the pediatric practices that treat its patients. It will be open on weekends and on weekday evenings from six to midnight.

“If your child gets ill or injured and it’s after-hours and your pediatrician is closed, or it’s on the weekend, or he’s on vacation, you’re only option is to go to the emergency room,” van Amerongen explained. “But emergency departments are only designed for critically injured or ill patients and they’re not as efficient when it comes to patients” who are not as sick.

Van Amerongen described the idea as a “no-brainer” based on his experience in the emergency room.

“90 percent of the children I see in the emergency department, we fix them up and send them home,” he said. “90 percent of those children could just be easily served in an outpatient urgent care center.”

He also added that hospitals make money on admission, and that there is a degree of pressure to admit children, but not at Priority Pediatrics.

“We’re solely working for the good of the child,” van Amerongen asserted.

He also stressed that all staff members at the clinic will be highly trained, unlike at emergency rooms that are sometimes staffed by medical residents who are still in training.

The clinic is not intended to replace pediatric offices and will not offer well-care services such as vaccinations or ‘well checks.’ Van Amerongen believes that the clinic will work in partnership with local pediatric offices, sending them follow-up reports of their patients.

Dr. Joseph Rozenbaum, a pediatrician at Long Island Pediatrics in Cedarhurst, welcomed the development.

“I think it has a place in the pediatric population, because parents are much more worried about their kids having a fever. If an adult wakes up with a 104 degree fever in the middle of the night, he’ll go back to sleep,” asserted Rozenbaum. “It’s very rare for an adult doctor to get called in the middle of the night. It’s us poor unfortunate pediatrics that get called.”

In other words, doctors keep business hours; kids don’t.

The waiting room of Priority Pediatrics is a children’s mock-up of London, an idea which came to van Amerongen after his eleven-year old daughter suggested what would become the Priority Pediatrics logo: a teddy bear dressed as a Buckingham Palace guard.

“Kids like teddy bears,” van Amerongen explained. “And he’s guarding their health.”